Today, the 303-day Battle of Bahmut between Ukraine and Russia is now the longest-running battle in world history, if sieges are not counted.
The record was previously held by the World War I Battle of Verdun in 1916 between Germany and France. Verdun was a 302-day massacre and, in the eyes of many, the most terrible battle in the history of mankind.
Hundreds of thousands of people died at Verdun. Bahmut’s death toll is not yet known.
Of the two battles, Bahmut is smaller, but infinitely more difficult for its fighters. Soldiers often talk without jewelry from hellwhere they surely die.
The experiences have the same tone as the letters and diaries of the victims of Verdun.
“Hell can’t be this terrible. People are crazy,” a French lieutenant Alfred Joubaire wrote in his diary in the trenches of Verdun shortly before an artillery shell took his life.
More than a hundred years have passed between Bahmut and Verdun, but despite that, they have much in common.
1. Overture
The events preceding Verdun and Bahmut are also similar.
Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 with its attempt to capture the capital city of Kyiv, the suburbs of which it was able to reach. Then the troops that had advanced too far had to retreat in confusion.
Similarly, in 1914, Germany pushed almost to Paris, but had to retreat after stretching its lines too much.
There are also essential differences.
Battle of Bahmut started With smaller and unsuccessful Russian attacks on August 1st and developed step by step into a vortex swallowing soldiers and equipment.
Verdun was carefully planned for months to kill as many French as possible.
It was the first planned battle of attrition. The head of the Imperial German Field Army, a general, was behind the idea Erich von Falkenhayn. He promised the emperor “to pour France dry”.
Later, justified doubts have been raised about Falkenhayn’s motives. Falkenhayn exaggerated the element of attrition to cover up the failed attack.
Battle of Bahmut started From Russia’s smaller and unsuccessful attacks on August 1st, it developed step by step into a vortex swallowing soldiers and equipment. It was decided by the leader of the Russian Wagner private army Yevgeny Prigozhin when declaring On October 8, Bahmut still being captured by his troops.
2. The battle
The battles of Verdun and Bahmut are similar in tactics.
– There are actually no human wave tactics, although there has been a lot of talk about them, says an expert on the war in Ukraine Emil Kastehelmi.
The Russians advance in Bahmut largely in small infantry strike forces, group and platoon at a time, taking advantage of the cover of artillery fire and the terrain.
The first soldiers to use the method in modern warfare were the German assault troops at Verdun in 1916.
On the first day of the Battle of Verdun, German artillery fired a million grenades at the French positions.
For the sake of comparison, Russia has fired at most about 60,000 grenades per day throughout Ukraine.
During artillery concentrations, the assault troops crept close to the enemy’s trenches and when the artillery fire stopped, the assault troops hit the trench with hand grenades and melee weapons. Nowadays with assault rifles, before with carbines and bayonets.
Germany advanced rapidly in the early days of the battle, but at a heavy price, paid mainly by the elite assault troops.
In Bahmut, the same price has been paid during the battle by the prisoners recruited by Wagner in small groups occupying the Ukrainian positions in a long stream and eventually also Wagner’s elite troops.
In Bahmut, according to Kastehelme, some of the fiercest battles have taken place at the bend in the Hromoven road, in front of which Ukraine has been holding on to a piece of field with its claws, so that Russia would not be able to cut off Ukraine’s supply routes.
At Verdun, the fiercest fighting took place for months on Le Mort Homme, Dead Man’s Hill. More than 10,000 French soldiers fell in the defense of its Côte 304 hill alone. At its peak, 500 cannons pounded the hill day and night, until it was described as looking like a volcano.
3. Hell
In both Verdun and Bahmut the position of the infantry is very heavy, but the new aircraft have changed things.
At Verdun, it was common for troops to rise from trenches and potholes to attack and fall immediately, often to the last man.
The same thing has been seen in Bahmut, on a smaller scale.
– Pictures have been seen in which the Ukrainian company launches a counterattack and is destroyed in its place, says an analyst of open data sources Pasi Paroinen.
In the pictures, Verdun and Bahmut resemble each other. Crushed tree trunks, endless muddy field, pulverized earth.
During the battle, Verdun was described as one big open grave, because the dead were often left lying in those places. Constant artillery fire alternately buried the bodies and alternately dug up the remains.
It is not a stranger in Bahmut either. Kastehelmi believes that many dead are buried under the mud and in explosion pits.
– You can see from the footage that bodies are often left there, but some collecting has also been done. It is imperative that diseases do not spread and morale suffer, says Kastehelmi.
A smattering of rotting corpses connects battlefields anyway.
4. Heaven
In World War I, airplanes played a major role for the first time, and Verdun was the battlefield where air power was born.
The war in Ukraine and the Battle of Bahmut was the first drone war, especially with regard to the small filming copters originally intended for private use.
The territory of Ukraine has long traditions in the history of air warfare, the first air battle took place in Western Ukraine in 1914 when Pyotr Nesterov crashed into a German plane on purpose.
In the same way, now the filming copters of both sides destroy each other by colliding.
The battles are also connected by the weapons with which the battles are mainly fought.
Bahmut’s battle is fought even in Maxim-with machine guns. They were developed more than 130 years ago and with was killed piles of infantry already at Verdun.
Some of the weapons have evolved. Flamethrowers were seen for the first time at Verdun. Now the heir to the flamethrowers, the dreaded TOS-1 rocket launcher spitting thermobaric warheads in Bahmut.
Bahmut has still been mainly an artillery and infantry battle like Verdun. Perhaps Ukraine’s most important weapon is the 155 millimeter cannon, a modern descendant of the same caliber used primarily by France at Verdun.
5. Defeat and death
The battles are also connected by the relative uncertainty of losses. However, the significant difference is that Bahmut was captured and Verdun was not.
Despite hundreds of thousands of fallen and wounded, Germany never took control of the city of Verdun itself. The last big German attack only got within sight with the help of poison gas.
The city of Bahmut has been conquered by Russia mainly with the help of Wagner. The battle continues outside the city.
At Verdun, the German offensive collapsed due to lack of troops: divisions had to be moved to stop the British and French (disastrous) offensive on the Somme and the Russian (successful) Brusilov offensive in the east.
The Battle of Verdun turned in the summer. By December, France had recaptured almost everything Germany had bought with the blood of hundreds of thousands of soldiers.
Likewise, Russia has had to withdraw both its regular troops and Wagner from Bahmut in the summer to receive the long-awaited Ukrainian counterattack.
Historically, estimates of losses at Verdun, i.e. killed, wounded and captured, vary between over 700,000 and 1,250,000. The number depends on the calculation method and who is asked. There were between 300,000 and 420,000 dead.
In Bahmut, both Russia and Ukraine have been silent about their own losses.
Prigozhin is spoke of Wagner’s 20,000 dead, veteran commander of eastern Ukraine and war influencer Igor Girkin 40,000 of the fallen. In May, the United States estimated Russia’s five-month losses at more than 100,000 soldiers. It is impossible to tell the truth about Ukraine’s losses.
Analyst Pasi Paroinen would take a very cautious approach to everything Prigožin says: Similarly, the Russian losses announced by Ukraine are not based on reality.
We still don’t know if the end of Bahmut’s battles will ever be revealed.
However, the losses have been very severe.
But does it matter?
6. Meaning
– Bahmut’s significance for the outcome of the war is not yet clear. Much depends on the coming counterattack. If it goes well, kudos to Ukraine for investing in Bahmut’s fight. If the counterattack goes badly, we praise Russia for the same thing, analyzes the docent of military sciences Ilmari Käihkö.
In Russia, the capture of the city of Bahmut has at least been officially celebrated.
The victory at Verdun was celebrated in France, at least by the civilians. When the French president Raymond Poincaré arrived at Verdun to reward his troops, soldiers threw rocks at his car.
At Verdun, the French army, which saw almost no desertion at the front in the first year of the war, showed the first signs of losing discipline. It was as if the heart had been torn from the breast of France, a country accustomed to consider itself the finest warrior nation in Europe.
The reason was partly the noria, the French army’s method of rapidly circulating troops to and from Verdun. Three quarters of the French army had to go through the hell of Verdun at least once.
Similarly, according to Paroinen, about 70 percent of the troops of the Ukrainian army have participated in the Battle of Bahmut, excluding the troops reserved for the counterattack.
At the beginning of the war, Ukraine could rely on the ranks of volunteers who poured in from all over to defend their country. Now the conscripts are called to line up.
– On an individual level, some are forced into service, says Paroinen.
Similarly, Russia has long had to rely on mobiks, an insufficiently trained lifting crew.
There are still elites in Russia. According to Paroinen, otherwise Wagner would not have been able to conquer Bahmut.
Most importantly, Russia has a massively larger population. Superiority in population was one big reason why France and other surrounding powers defeated Germany in World War I.
Ukraine, on the other hand, relies on the help of the United States and the West, the equipment sent by them has hardly been seen in Bahmut, it is saved for a counterattack.
Whether that’s enough, we don’t know.
For now, Bahmut is still like Verdun. historian Alistair Horne I said: “Neither side ‘won’ Verdun; it was an unsettled battle in an unsettled war; a battle where there were no winners, a war where there were no winners”.
In addition to the interviews used as sources, Alistair Horne’s book “Price of Glory” and by Paul Jankowski book “Verdun”.
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